Odds and Ends

Ian and Mike are going to Aspen tomorrow to watch the X Games. For those of you who have escaped the scourge of X Games on ESPN, they are "competitions" where people (usually young men who are uneducated and do not have families) attempt all sorts of crazy, dangerous stunts on snow with all kinds of apparatus. There are "Skiing Men's Slope Style," "Freestyle Snowmobile," and "Elimination Pipe."

I do know in "Freestyle Snowmobile" men (I am convinced this is a gender-specific sport) attempt flips, back flips and sailing through the air with a snowmobile. In "Elimination Pipe" men attempt weird, convoluted positions with their bodies while on a snowboard boarding down a cement tube that looks like something from the Arizona Aqueduct.

I'm glad they're going. It means I can clean the house and it will remain clean until they return. It means I can eat what I want, when I want and how I want. It means I can sleep on the couch watching Doris Day and Rock Hudson movies. It means I do not have to watch the "Bourne Identity" for the thirteenth time. It means I do not have to eat pepperoni pizza. It means I only have to clean up after myself.

It also means that something in the house will break.

My friend Sam knows this as a fact.

She knows that every time Mike has been gone something in our house breaks or I buy some major appliance.

Mike was gone last week to Salt Lake City.

I woke up the first morning he was gone to an alarm going off in the garage. I didn't even know we had an alarm in the garage. My immediate solution to the problem was to ignore it. I figured if the house blew up it would be easier to collect money on it than try to sell it.

When I returned from work five hours later it was still going off. So I called Mike. He told me to call an electrician.

The electrician came out and first told me that his hearing was not that great so he couldn't really hear the alarm.

What was the point in having the electrician come out? So I wandered about the garage pointing out the twelve different places I heard the alarm.

It took a dog to solve the problem...really. 

The electrician is cupping his ear (does that really help?) and I'm looking upward and Bodie, our arrogant yet intelligent collie, pokes his nose at the door of our tent trailer. I look at Bodie, am immediately disgusted with my stupidity, open the door to the trailer and reach in and turn off the carbon monoxide alarm.

The electrician wrote me a bill for $79.00.

Sam knows that I have built decks, bought refrigerators, gutted a living room and purchased numerous horses while Mike has been gone.

This time I'm hoping to have the house sold and moved back to Oregon by Saturday.

Hey, it could happen.